jawafour wrote:Amazon pushing Prime *hard* to be the de facto standard for their customers. It’s infuriating to search for an item and find that they will only sell it to Prime subscribers .

Yeah I agree with this a lot. This year I've bought most of my Christmas gifts from online stores other than Amazon. I bought four items from them still, as they had some things I found hard to source elsewhere - specific items.

I've seen them hold back videos games, blu-rays, and last year at Christmas they wouldn't let me buy an external hard drive. The fact they won't let you buy these things at all is ridiculous. Imagine Tesco not letting you buy butter unless you had a Tesco clubcard that cost you £70 a year (or whatever Prime costs).

Safe to say that, combined with Amazon being full of third party sellers, means I'll pretty much never be on there in future.

I could... but it was the attractive price at Amazon that lured me in, dude. So I guess I could get stuff cheaper if I pay an £80 subscription. Amazon are doing what many retailers, service providers and game publishers are trying to do now - get you signed up to make regular payments.

I could... but it was the attractive price at Amazon that lured me in, dude. So I guess I could get stuff cheaper if I pay an £80 subscription. Amazon are doing what many retailers, service providers and game publishers are trying to do now - get you signed up to make regular payments.

Yes, that is the digital model most prevelant today and it is about extracting as much reliable, repeat income from customers as possible even if they do not regularly have a need for it and in some cases without necessarily doing anything but adding a CPU core here and there to a server cluster.

And of course, for the majority of customers, it's an uneconomical option because if your 1st interest is occasional shopping (say, a few purchases per month), you are paying more overall and not benefiting from the lower prices (if you discount the accepted cost of next day shipping that, to be fair, MANY online outlets are able to fulfil with delivery cut-off times like 4-6pm and Royal Mail 24 franking/collection set-ups). The "USP" in this case besides next day delivery (that I don't really think is such a big deal unless you literally never plan anything or have serious impulse shopping issues) is all the digital content and related services that, imo, are usually offered better someplace else - for a combined cost of STILL less than Amazon's offering.

So, yes, it is an aggressive strategy and one that nonetheless makes Amazon an incredible amount of money, while investing poorly in those people that deliver the ground floor essential services, despite being very much able to do so, with a technological (and customer service/"happiness" & marketing) elite at the top. It will be interesting to see how sustainable it is in, say, 50-100years.

Myself, I take pride in finding as good or better prices as well and carefully selecting my suppliers for certain things. I do shop on Amazon, but I increasingly use marketplace to buy odd things like, a medical kit, for example. And that's supporting small businesses in a similar way that Amazon themselves do not - so it's a good incentive of theirs, and I'm glad they facilitate that. I may use it myself. Of course, Amazon make money from listing fees, but no more than the sort of overheads you can expect to pay for any kind of 3rd party online selling solution, and it opens up their brand and technology to pretty much anyone. I'd have a lot more beef with them if they didn't do that and just undercut strawberry floating everyone (via monopolistic economy of scale and tax evasion).

Delivery drivers who are incapable of ringing a doorbell. You only have to press it once arsehole, you don't have to keep pressing it so it rings in perpetuity or cuts out because you just. won't. stop. pressing. the. strawberry floating. button.

Hell, there's even a ring around the button that lights up blue so just in case you are deaf, there is a visual aid to tell you that, yes, this device does actually work.

KK wrote:Delivery drivers who are incapable of ringing a doorbell. You only have to press it once arsehole, you don't have to keep pressing it so it rings in perpetuity or cuts out because you just. won't. stop. pressing. the. strawberry floating. button.

Hell, there's even a ring around the button that lights up blue so just in case you are deaf, there is a visual aid to tell you that, yes, this device does actually work.

Delivery drivers who rap loudly on the door when you have a doorbell fitted.

KK wrote:Delivery drivers who are incapable of ringing a doorbell. You only have to press it once arsehole, you don't have to keep pressing it so it rings in perpetuity or cuts out because you just. won't. stop. pressing. the. strawberry floating. button.

Hell, there's even a ring around the button that lights up blue so just in case you are deaf, there is a visual aid to tell you that, yes, this device does actually work.

Delivery drivers who rap loudly on the door when you have a doorbell fitted.

I have a friend who does that when he comes to visit. Problem is if I have loud music playing I can't always hear a knock at the door so I keep the doorbell speaker in my room when expecting company. Invariably after 10-15 mins of him knocking I get a phonecall from him saying he's been outside for 10-15 mins. I'm like "Dude, I've got a doorbell for strawberry float's sake"